Sean “P. Diddy” Combs has embarked on a potentially risky strategy to make his mark on high fashion, in an unlikely pairing announced yesterday, by partnering up with fashion designer Zac Posen.

Hip-hop impresario Combs has agreed to purchase half of Posen’s business for an undisclosed amount, on the condition that the 23-year-old designer retains creative control of his company.

The terms of the deal stand in contrast to the high-profile wrangling that tends to upset the marriages between creative designers and the businessmen who finance them.

Notably, Tom Ford and Chief Executive Domenico De Sole are to leave the Gucci Group at the end of the month, after failing to secure guarantees of creative freedom from the company’s new parent, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute.

Combs, through a spokesman, said yesterday that he doesn’t intend to follow in the path of European luxury houses like Gucci, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Prada, which spent a fortune in the 1990s to buy fashion labels only to watch most of them flounder.

“This investment is a special, one-time situation,” the spokesman said. “He is not, or will not be, looking to invest in other brands.”

Combs’ interest in Posen – the two began talking of a deal while mixing music for Posen’s runway show in February – comes as he embarks on an ambitious and expensive plan to open retail stores for his own company, the $450-million-a-year Sean John label.

Private equity firm Yucaipa Cos. last year invested an estimated $100 million in Sean John to help pay for the rollout.